


Cutdown

by Enchantable



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hate Sex, Love/Hate, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 11:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enchantable/pseuds/Enchantable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh hates himself, Mako helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cutdown

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Maleigh hate sex! Even though they don't really hate each other but still!

He keeps his razor in her room.

They don’t talk about it. She appears at his door the day he wraps his hand around the plastic to figure out how it comes apart. She holds out her hand and he drops it in to her palm and she walks away. She appears whenever he’s in danger of getting yelled at for having a beard and waits while he shaves. He’s glad for her presence, for the way she doesn’t comment, doesn’t stare, but doesn’t let him close the bathroom door either.

His circut scars are not the only ones he has.

She knows his head’s a fucked up place, where he spends endless hours debating whether its better to feel the bombardment of Yancy’s final moments or it’s better to hear the bone crushing silence that came seconds later. The agony, at least, is something of Yancy, the silence is just dead. Five years ago, the night his feet hit the ground in Alaska when he couldn’t decide he closed his eyes and sliced two long lines in to his skin. The longer one was for the screaming so he listened to that Until he couldn’t stand it and drew two new lines to hear the silence instead.

Mako doesn’t have a problem with his scars.

She isn’t afraid of them and she isn’t ashamed on his behalf. But she doesn’t touch the lines on his wrist, especially the longest, deepest ones that are ten layered on top of each other when he couldn’t decide. She doesn’t touch the ones on his inner thigh either. The older, faded lines that were carved in to his skin sitting on the tub where no-one could see Except for Yancy who ripped the razor from his skin and screamed everything Raleigh couldn’t say as he shoved one of moms good towels to his broken skin. The reason she doesn’t touch him isn’t because she doesn’t want to, it’s because the one time she did it send electricity through his skin and it felt so nice he whimpered for her to stop before the urge came back.

If his skin is a map those two patches are dead zones. Barren stretches that have nothing good about them. The urge is still there, even with another person in the back of his head and a thousand reasons not to add more decoration to his skin. So Mako watches when he handles the razor and does everything to keep him busy when she sees his hands itching towards the lines. Their fingers know each others intimately, every scar every callous—he thinks sometimes they could draw each other’s fingerprints for all they’ve traced them. 

She’s sitting on his bunk when he runs the razor over his skin. When he looks in the mirror the eyes that stare back at him are blue and for a moment he thinks they should be brown. They’re cold where they should be warm. His features are too sharp and his hair is too blonde and the rage just pounds under his skin. His fingers curl and he has to get rid of the reflection. 

She catches his wrist on the second punch. 

Mirror’s already slammed through his skin but he wants to hit it again and again. He wants to pound it until the reflection that looks back at him is right. Until it’s Yancy’s reflection. But it isn’t and it never will be and somewhere he knows that and it breaks something deep in his chest. 

He’s sinking to his knees and Mako’s got her arms around him. He’s breathing out through clenched teeth, harsh pants of air that don’t sound like anything he recognizes. Her arms are around him, holding him to her. Her fingers are in his hair, one arm is under his, isolating his limb. His damaged, bum limb. 

"Hurts," he chokes out. 

"I know," she says closing her eyes. 

She does and it kills him that she knows a fragment of the pain he feels. Hell she feels all of it. She knows what drives him, what’s always driven him. That’s the thing they don’t tell you about the drift. When you understand someone on that level, when you feel it on that level, your emotions call to each other. They egg each other on. Her desire for vengeance, all that anger she’s spent years carrying around, it calls to his own and it feels like an explosion going off under his skin.

He chokes on the desire to slice it out of his skin, on the overwhelming need to slice it from him. Mako tightens her arms around him, her body folding around his. The razor drops as his hands fly up, wrapping around her and pulling her closer. She drops, their limbs tangling together. She’s small but she’s strong, she’s unmovable and the pulse of her heart echoes in his ears. 

Her heart echoes and he hears his own in his ears and it feels like he’s split in the middle. Instead of everything howling that this is wrong it’s like half of him is screaming and the other half is silent. Like the screams are hitting a dead wall and just getting louder and louder. He makes a sound and she holds him tighter, fingers digging harder in to his skin. He knows he’s going to have bruises and he hates how calming that thought is. 

She holds him painfully tight as he quakes on the floor, her legs around his waist and her hands pulling him to her skin. He pushes himself closer, breathing in the sent of her skin and wishing there was a way she didn’t have to feel what was in his head. His head rolls along her collar bone as she ducks hers, her breath brushing his skin as she exhales. They sit there breathing the same air as they sit on the bathroom floor while his breathing steadies.

He doesn’t let her go as his hand slides up the back of her tank, desperation echoing in every touch. She turns with his hand, curving her stomach as he slides her shirt up. Their permissions aren’t always spoken. They are felt, like the way she moves her shoulders and ducks her head so her tank go flying off to the far reaches of the minuscule bathroom. His skin presses to hers and her muscles contract because there’s still a ghost of shaving cream on his cheeks and it’s cold against her skin.

He goes to pull back and she holds him there, his apology turning in to a shaky sigh he breathes out as he presses his lips to her skin. Her fingers tighten on his head, pulling him closer as he breathes in her scent. His face remains tight to her as she sinks down, her slight weight anchoring him on the floor, grounding him to where he is. 

"Mako," he gets out. 

"I know," she replies.

"But—" he begins and pulls back.

She presses her fingers to his lips and then replaces them with her own. She’s not gentle. Not the way her mouth presses to his and definitely not the way her teeth bite his bottom lip. She pulls back her her pupils are blown wide, her eyes inky and bottomless as she meets his gaze. 

"I know,” she repeats. 

He shudders as he pulls her closer. His fingers are itching for the razor so instead he buries them in her skin. She clings to him tighter, bruising him and letting him know that she knows what he feels. That in her head she’s sat on the toilet and run the blade over her own skin. She’s felt the blood and the agony and aches in the same way. As much as he presses himself to her, she presses herself right back. 

She’s just as rough on him. Their pain echoes in each other and it’s a struggle not to give in completely. He holds her tight, taking care not to press his fingers to her—to do his best not to bruise her. She aches because he does, she craves the pain because he does. She doesn’t deserve to feel the pain, not even if it’s attempting to help him. 

She doesn’t let him go on nights like this, though a part of him wants her to. He wants her to push him away, to make sure that she’s safe and just let him drown. But she doesn’t. She can’t. She wraps them together and holds him tight and doesn’t let him go as she kicks off her pants and shoves his down. She drags him out of the water, she makes him hold on to the life raft. Makes him focus on her instead of the darkness that claws at him. She doesn’t just make him hold on to the life raft, she becomes his. 

He holds her the entire time. 

He only lets her knees touch the cold stone of the floor but even that feels like too much. She digs her fingers in to his shoulders and buries her face in his neck as she moves. He clings to her, breathing harshly against her skin. Everything goes in to moving with her, to focusing just on how she moves. He clings to the thoughts in her head, to how she feels when she’s in his arms, to the way she feels when he’s inside her and cocooned around her and they can’t tell where one starts and the other ends even when they aren’t in each other’s heads. 

Even when they’re done he doesn’t let her move and she doesn’t try to. She holds him tighter, her fingers edging the scratches she digs in to his shoulder blades. Their tears and their sweat mingle together as they cling to each other on the bathroom floor, their bodies still locked together. 

The razor is still in reach but he holds her instead, his face still buried in her skin. Even after his heart quiets and his breath steadies she holds him. She holds him until all he knows is her. 

"Mako," he tries again and she’s so close he can feel her shake her head even though his face is pressed to her chest. 

"I know," she says softly. 

He believes her.


End file.
